Mātaki Mai Film Festival - Closing Ceremony

Join us as we farewell the Mātaki Mai Māori Film Festival for another incredible year of films celebrating Te Ao Māori.

3pm: Closing Event includes a glass of wine and nibbles on arrival.

4.10pm: Screening begins.

Unlikely Kin

In Unlikely Kin, directors Kim Webby and Michael Jonathan follow whales, kauri, kiore and the Parata whānau into a story of whakapapa, healing and responsibility — asking us to reconsider what kinship with the natural world might really mean.

Filmed over five years, the film follows elder Hori Parata (Ngāti Wai) and his son Te Kaurinui as they lead the sacred practice of harvesting stranded whales—not for consumption, but to honour whakapapa and revive traditional medicine used to treat kauri dieback, a disease killing New Zealand’s ancient trees. Alongside this, we follow their conservation work protecting the kiore, the Polynesian rat that arrived in Aotearoa with the great Māori migration.

Interweaving themes of kinship between species, cultural survival, and Māori-led conservation, the film offers rare access to a sacred world where whales, forests, and even rats are revered as living ancestors.